Chris Around The World: Your Guide to Value Luxury Vacations
Unique, chic, boutique: Vacations for Sophisticated Travelers
This is the second in our series on the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. If you have never been to the festival, the following photo essay may give you inspiration to go if you are heavily drawn to either music or culture. Our first stop as we entered the festival grounds led us to the [...]
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When I lived in New Orleans, the Jazz & Heritage Festival was one of many celebrations on the spring calendar, albeit one of the biggest; an appropriate bookend to a season that begins with Twelfth Night and Mardi Gras, meanders through St. Patrick’s Day, St. Joseph’s Day and Easter, and encompasses the French Quarter Festival [...]
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With Jazzfest on the immediate horizon, the Thursday night Kermit Ruffins show at Vaughan’s, a shack-style bar in New Orleans’ arty Bywater neighborhood, drew a larger-than-usual crowd. Don and I staked out a place toward the front, near the New Orleans police barricades that keep the enthusiastic fans from crushing Ruffins, a peace-and-dope-loving, trumpet-playing [...]
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This week’s Photo Friday (#FriFotos) theme is PARKS. Pictured above is Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop, the oldest bar in New Orleans (and possibly one of the oldest in the US). It’s named for Jean Lafitte, the famed pirate and privateer who supposedly used the bar, on Bourbon Street in the Lower French Quarter, as a [...]
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There are plenty of cool hotels in New Orleans, but on my last trip, I chose two places where I had always wanted to stay: The Columns Hotel on St. Charles Avenue and the International House in the Central Business District Downtown. We spent two nights at each. Built in 1883 by New Orleans architect [...]
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Jambalaya, crawfish pie, file gumbo….I think we ate them all. Besides my cocktail-fueled costume lunch at Commander’s Palace and luxe Saturday night dinner at Stella! in the French Quarter, our forays into New Orleans cuisine kept on going, with two visits into the Carrollton neighborhood. Jacques-Imo’s is one of my favorite New Orleans restaurants; I [...]
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Every time I visit New Orleans, I visit old favorites – and then try something new. This trip, I finally made it to Restaurant Stella!, the French Quarter restaurant by Chef Scott Boswell. Stella opened right before I left in 2001, and I never got to try it. I have to admit that the exclamation [...]
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A bout of bad weather on our recent New Orleans trip meant that I had the chance to skip parades and focus on another aspect of the city I love: shopping! Normally, I do most of my New Orleans shopping in the cute shops along Magazine Street. But my sister and I were within walking [...]
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It goes without saying that the Krewe of Muses has one of the best parades of the Carnival season. What else would you expect from a group of New Orleans’ most successful professional women? Even though we’re a relatively young krewe, only 11 years old, we quickly established ourselves on the Mardi Gras scene, thanks [...]
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A few people have asked me what people need to do to join a Mardi Gras krewe (and how much it costs). Most krewes, especially the older ones, have closed memberships that have, in some cases, been handed down through families for generations. New Orleans holds its traditions tight, so you have a better chance [...]
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